


Cartoon Hearts

by Juliet_Capri



Series: Home Sweet Home [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Depression, M/M, Mentions of loss, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7687522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliet_Capri/pseuds/Juliet_Capri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky left behind all the physical items that made Bucky something other a bag of muscle and bone. When he left, all Steve could do was pray for more time, more meaningful moments with the only thing that mattered. He wasn’t going to call his time with Bucky wasted, he cherished the moments he had with Bucky before he left to the hellhole that the Nazi troops made. He did see the army as a propaganda machine, though, and his desire to be a hero had become a desire to see, feel and touch his Bucky again long before he entered the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cartoon Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Steve is very depressed,arguably suicidal in this fic. If this is a trigger for you then I urge you to skip this installment of the "Home Sweet Home" series. If you would like a brief, non graphic description of this story you can find one at the end of this work.
> 
> All mistakes are my own and as I have no bete, there will be quite a few. I will happily accept your comments, questions, thought, concerns and inquiries in the comment section below! Please enjoy!

Bucky left behind two match books, a collection of battered baseball cards, and a pillow with a slight indent permeant in the center. In essence, he left all the physical items that made Bucky something other a bag of muscle and bone. As the clothing lost the musky sent that once enveloped them and apartment grow colder without Bucky, Steve saw more and more his heart break. He couldn’t stand going to church, but he took to kneeling by the moldy mattress he still slept on even after the sent was gone. He prayed for more time, more meaningful moments with the only thing that mattered to Steve. He wasn’t going to call his time with Bucky wasted, he cherished the moments he had with Bucky before he left to the hellhole that the Nazi troops made. He did see the army as a propaganda machine, though, and his desire to be a hero had become a desire to see, feel and touch his Bucky again long before he entered the war. 

From the beginning, Steve knew he would lose everything to war. He lost his father to the trenches, his mother to the sickness that fallowed soldiers home and then he lost Bucky to plot lines between the politics. His constant sense of dread made his blood boil even while Bucky was just miles away at boot camp. His only reprieve was Bucky’s letters from boot camp; little reassurances that seemed more strained and less real the longer he was gone. Steve knew something was wrong the first time Bucky didn’t end his letter with “’till the end of the line”; Bucky was a lot of things, but sly wasn’t one and a letter without that phrase made Steve think his Bucky was going to die. 

He could practically taste Bucky’s fear of that exact fate when he read the final letter from Bucky’s time at boot camp. In the days that fallowed; Bucky would come home, say good bye to the people who cared – most likely for the last time – and be put on a ship to the other side of the world. He knew Bucky wouldn’t be able to handle war, but the only way out was desertion now. Steve fought with himself; he needed Bucky more than air, but he couldn’t – wouldn’t – force Bucky to loss the only thing he ever cared about; his honor as an American. 

The days after the expo – the last time his Bucky would be whole – were long. He felt like he was on auto pilot. He was fumbling through life and it was a cruel play on wish fulfillment when Dr. Erskine picked him. The serum gave him health when the world was dying, a purpose but no honorable ambition, and the strength to save world but no time to save his soul. 

He did lose everything, but the serum made him feel that loss longer then his mother, his saintly mother, got to live. It was a joke; a shell of a man designed to die got to live when good people, honorable people had their lives cut short. It was the epitome of cruel. To Steve, it proved the devil was real for nothing like it could happen by chance. After he crashed the plane and as his skin frosted over, his vision beginning to darken, his last thought was that if the devil was real than God must also be real. He had to be because Bucky deserved to have every blessing the Army thought they gave Steve. 

He didn’t know how to feel when he woke up. He thought about Peggy and her frail voice as she cried for him to not leave her, to let her find another way; he owed her world and now could repay that debt. He thought about Bucky; without him, what world did Steve have to give? He realized that for all wonderful things Peggy was to the people around her, she couldn’t help him. He belonged to someone dead, someone who died knowing how inadequate he really was. In the end it didn’t matter though. He wasn’t in Peggy’s time anymore. She – like everyone else – was gone. He was alien in “the modern world.” On its surface the new world seemed unimaginably foreign, but once Steve looked past the neon lights and new technology it became familiar in the worst ways.

The future was cold. It reflected what Steve was; a shell of what it could be. It had the buildings to house communities three times the size of Steve’s and none of those people could name even one of their neighbor. It had more opportunities for work, health, and happiness, but not a caring enough community to sustain it. When he was living in D.C., he saw maybe twelve people daily and talked to only one person outside of S.HE.I.L.D. a week. Even then, it turns out that one person was an agent all along. People wondered the world alone and unlike Steve who was painfully aware of the emptiness of his life, the people of the future lived in ignorance. 

Steve thinks this realization isolated him from the modern Americans even more then his age or lack of pop culture knowledge did. He couldn’t look at his younger peers and not see hope in their eyes. They felt the phantom purpose he felt after the serum; they just didn’t know that the feeling would fade leaving a bitter core in its place. He started going to church again after a young man, maybe nineteen, told Steve that Captain America was the reason that the boy joined the military and eventually became a S.H.E.I.L.D. agent. After the evening mass, Steve prayed not for God to save the young boy, or to pull the wool from his eyes; but instead to tack the wool down, to kill him before he lost the phantom purpose inside of him. Steve firmly believed that his life in the future; a life aware of his emptiness was worse than even the most brutal death. He prayed for all of the people in this new world. He hopped they wouldn’t ever realize what they all really were.

He was praying the first time Natasha tried to “connect” with him. She most have been put of watch duty for Steve was just prying after a session in confessional.

“Who was it, Rogers?” the woman had asked him. She was kneeling next to him; her red pulled pack to accentuate the long line of her neck as she bowed in seemingly mock submission. 

Steve processed what was around him before he replied; the room was almost empty with only two patrons farther ahead in the pews. The priest had left his confessional booth when Steve finished an hour before, so he doubted he was in their now. No one in the room to report back to Fury on their conversation. “What, Natasha?”

“Who are you prying for?”

Steve stared blankly ahead, “Do you know that small, blond women from S.H.E.I.L.D.? She works four floors below Fury and is always excited.”

“That sounds like a lot of the people at S.H.E.L.D.”

He sighed, “I’m praying for her.”

“Is she sick?”

“Not in any way she is aware of.” 

“That sounds like she is sick. Does your super senses help you tell that sort of thing? Why don’t you tell her your suspensions?”

“Then why would I pray? I’m not praying for her to be cured. Quite the opposite actually.”

“You want it to kill her?” Natasha sound surprised.

“It would be curler to tell her. Knowing is worse.”

“But we might – medicine is better now, Steve. She might have a chance –”

“No one has a chance. This isn’t something your ‘modern medicine’ can fix, no matter how much I wish it did.” He stood and left. He couldn’t – wouldn’t – be shamed for doing the right thing. That was what he was doing, the right thing. Like he always did and always would. People like Natasha just didn’t see it. They wouldn’t be able to see it; Steve prayed for that to stay true as well.

He should have known Natasha was the one reporting to Fury. Two days after their conversation in church, he was called in to Fury’s office. The director through a card at him and gruffly said “Skip that appointment, and I won’t hesitate to lock you away and throw away the key. You’ll wish you were stuck in ice once you’ve been to the places I can put you in.”

Steve looked down at the card; it had an address on it, but no name. Steve tried to ask what the address was, but he was dismissed and he left the room just barely hearing Fury mutter “He’s lucky he’s not a recruit. God, I hate those damn rookies.”

Steve left the S.H.E.I.L.D. office and called a cab. He’d normally not even take the bus. He liked how even in the smallest way, walking to every destination connected him to the people. He knew he was being selfish, but he was tired. He was tired of being alone, tired of caring everything that he had to; he wanted to give up and damn them all, but if he took a little bit of their company for himself then he might be able to hold on.

The cab driver was an Indian man; he had children judging by the pictures on his dash and he didn’t ask Steve questions after he got the address from him. The ride was silent, but as the cab turned down roads Steve had never seen and passed buildings from eras even before Steve’s own, Steve wondered if he was closer to the age of his driver or the ancient mansions that lined the D.C. Streets. The cab stopped in front of a tall, red brick building with four stories of windows and a big heavy door separating the occupants from buzzy sidewalks and street blocks. Steve paid the driver and thanked him. The man nodded and thanked him for his business. 

Steve entered the building and was greeted by the smiling face of a blond twenty-something women behind a large circular desk. She looked him in the eyes and seemed to get even happier at seeing Steve standing in front her. Steve gave her as earnest a smile as he could and asked her softly, “I have an appointment with someone in this building. Can you tell me who that might be with?”

She typed very quickly into the computer; she looked up and said “Are you Mr. Rogers or Mr. O’Dell?”

“Rogers.”

“Ok, so that means you are meeting with Dr. Martin; her office is on the second floor. Just head up these stairs, turn right, and check in with the secretary to receive the proper paperwork. Have a nice day, sir.”

Steve returned the sentiment and climbed the stairs to a well light hall. He entered Dr. Christina Martin’s office through a glass door and was greeted by a soft spoken man. The man wore brown slakes, black thick rimmed glasses and a button down with polka dots the same purple color as his perfectly shaped bow tie. 

The man had Steve sign what seemed to be hundreds of forms, triple checked his birthday and name, and then preceded to blush like a ripe tomato. The man had a soft, vulnerable look to him. The slope of his nose was soft and famine, but his jaw and cheek bones were sharp and commanding. His whole body was precariously balanced between masculine and feminine. The man was not overly flirtatious, but Steve felt something – interest? Lust? Need for human contact? – well up in him. He hadn’t felt that way for any one after Peggy, but maybe.

His session of self-discovery was cut short when a woman – Dr. Martin walked out and addressed Steve, “Captain Rogers?”

“Yes, doctor,” Steve stood and shock her hand. Dr. Martin smiled and welcomed him into the back room that turned out to be an open leaving room style area with a couch, book self, and side chair facing the couch at an angle. She motioned for him to sit on the couch as she sat in the chair and pulled a clip board into her lap.  
“So,” Dr. Martin began, “I was told by your supervisor that you have exhibited – concerning signs.”

“Concerning signs?” Steve asked, “What signs? Why would they be concerning?”

Dr. Martin gained a serious tone to her voice when she replied, “Of depression. Your superiors have observed you to be withdrawn, you’ve had trouble remembering details such as your coworkers’ names, and you’ve been seen at your place of work earlier than expected combined with your documented extremely late hours, this indicates that you may have insomnia. Now, none of these signs guarantees that you experience depression, though, so please do not view your experiences in this office and predetermined.”

“I – Depression? I’ve never had depression. I’ve always been an early riser. I’m never good with names. I haven’t done anything. I’m just myself; I’m not perfect, but I’m not crazy.”

“I didn’t say that. You have shown signs of an illness; this doesn’t mean you have it nor does any illness make you ‘crazy’.”

“Then why am I here;” Steve leaned on his knees in a frustrated pose.

The Dr. straightened up and said, “Tell me about yourself; was your childhood happy? Did you have a healthy family? How about your transition in to the modern world?”

Steve took a deep breath, he sensed that refusing or attempting to reassure Dr. martin would be useless. He had to play her game. So, in a moment of surrender, Steve began, “I grow up in Brooklyn. My best friend was Bucky Barnes and the day we met, he gave Misty Eliot a little cartoon heart I drew for him.”

**Author's Note:**

> DESCRIPTION: Steve recounts his time as a child and young adult mainly focusing on his loneliness after Bucky's departure to war. Bucky was also scared, but Steve was too afraid of ruining his friends honor to ask him to stay. In the modern world, Steve sees a whole world as isolated and alone as he has always been. He is forced to see a Dr. Martin once word on Steve's recent concerning actions reach Fury. Dr. Martin tells Steve he may have depression and Steve is not quite ready to accept it. He begins to open up as a way to prove is own mental health to the doctor.
> 
> If you have anything you would like to tell me, please do in the comments below! Have a wonderful day!


End file.
